Out of the darkness, a weird image pops up: Lara, sitting upright against a black background. Her stomach contains a rectangular screen with digits: 6:59 a.m. She’s . . . an alarm clock? Lara winks as the time clicks over to 7:00 a.m. and screeches out, “Meow, meow, meow! Beep, beep, beep!” over and over.
I awake with a start. Lara is sitting beside me. She pulls her paw back from my forehead but continues making those awful sounds. She must have been projecting images of an alarm clock into my mind.
“Please, enough with the beeping. My head . . .”
Is pounding. I’m still on the couch, but Lara pulled a blanket over me. “How long was I unconscious?”
“Like, fifteen hours. I tried to wake you a few times, but apparently, you were extremely tired,” Lara explains.
I reach for my phone and find that Kyle called three times last night. She finally left a message: Meet me at work 2morrow. Got BIG NEWS.
Out in the street, I make my way through the roadblocks, traffic, and crowds as I hurry to work. What did Kyle find out? That thought keeps looping—but then I pass a hair salon whose entrance is cordoned off by hazard tape.
Blood is running out of the entry. Not a lot but enough that it’s noticeable. Yet people just walk on by like it’s no big deal, just another day in paradise. And all I can think of is that the nearest portal is two streets away. Monsters are not supposed to be able to get so far from a VC quarantine.
I notice the kid in the green hoodie from yesterday.
He’s standing near the blood, shivering faintly. He pulls out his phone and, clearly, is trying to open his VC app. “Come on, come on,” he mutters. He tiptoes closer to the battle scene, until his phone chimes with points.
“Hey!” I yell out.
Hoodie Kid recognizes me and darts off down the street. But he doesn’t get far. He slips on a McDonald’s wrapper, trips to the ground, and his phone lands a couple of steps away. He gets up quickly, but not before I grab the phone.
“Hey! That’s mine!” he yells. He tries to grab back the phone, but I hold my arm up and all he can do is hop around. “Give it!”
I shake my head. “I’ve had enough of you. I’m deleting your VC app.”
“Dude, I need my points!”
“Geez! Is this actually fun for you?”
The boy halts, pulls down his hood to glare. “Fun? I use points to buy food, dipshit. You think I like doing this?” he asks, waving his hand at not just the bloodied salon, but everything.
I notice dirt stains on his skin. His clothes have rips.
“Where are your parents, kid?” I clam up as soon as the question is out of my mouth.
“I’m not a kid,” he mutters with an all-too-familiar hardness. And I think I finally understand Penelope and Dean’s inside joke about F-16s: Maybe every young person has been jettisoned into adulthood. The F-16s are simply the ones getting hazard pay.
“I—”
Hoodie Boy lunges to jab a finger in the soft part of my stomach. I double over, and he grabs his phone back and starts running. But before he can get far, I yell out after him, “Hey! Wait. You . . . want my points? I can transfer them to you.”
After Kyle’s point-grabbing in the MDA, we split the extra points between us, which gave me 3,400 VC.
The boy stops to face me, shifts about warily. “Sure.” He holds out his phone but doesn’t get too close.
I open my VC app and press TRANSFER. I let my device scan for his, and then click another button to send him my points.
He lowers his gaze and shrugs. “Um. Thanks.”
He’s about to cross the street, but freezes when a man, a woman, and a little boy stroll down the opposite sidewalk, holding hands. Hoodie Boy’s shoulders sag, and I want to tell him he’s not alone. But then the family skips cheerily over a blood puddle, and Hoodie Boy scowls.
“Sometimes I wanna scream my head off, just to see if that would change anything,” he mumbles. “But nothing ever changes.”
“I refuse to believe that nothing can—”
Hoodie Boy starts to walk off, and I know there’s nothing I could say to change this moment. And maybe I have no fucking right to tell him what to do. So I take in a deep breath . . . and scream like a maniac. The family fun troop stops, startled. Hoodie Boy freezes too, until he turns to face me and howls just as loud, and the family darts away as if we’re demons.
The kid and I bowl over, cackling, until a patroller heads our way and we dart in opposite directions. But before we do, we share a nod.
I get to the mart only to find it’s not yet open. I step into the back room as Gully starts rounding up all the clerks for a morning meeting. I have no choice but to bide my time until I can catch up with Kyle.
Gully is manic today. He sounds super twitchy, like his voice is high up in his chest. He reminds us that Black Friday is two days away and that we need to do everything possible to win the Here For You head office’s Black Friday cash prize. Which is when he lays on the kicker: “To maximize our profits on the big day, I’ll be opening the store at midnight. Which means we’ll be staying open for twenty-four straight hours!”
The horsemen could strike at any time during that twenty-four-hour window.
My gaze shifts to the people around me—who all seem to be in various states of disbelief that our Black Friday just doubled—and I wonder if one of them could be a horseman.
I use my phone under a table to type a message to Lara:
How can I tell if someone’s a horseman?
Although Lara has no fingers, I’ve enabled voice commands on all devices at home. She replies swiftly: Hard to tell. Could be anyone, honestly.
I text her back: There must be clues? Body odor? Strange shadows? Gimme something.
Her reply: The horsemen will have blended in by now. They have access to knowledge about this world. So, yeah, there’s no real tip-offs that I know.
“Great . . . ,” I mumble.
Gully catches me drifting off and slams a meaty palm on the table in front of me. “Jasper! Do you want me to put you on the midnight shift for Black Friday?”
Actually, that would be ideal. I’d have the perfect cover to be here from the start.
“Uh . . . ,” I begin.
Gully rolls his eyes. “Bah, it’s better you take the day shift. You’re hopeless. I need all the best hands at the start.”
As he walks away, I know I need to poke the bear: “Um. Is it even legal for us to be working at midnight?”
Gully stops in his tracks. Turns around to glare. “Okay, dude. For that insubordination, you get the midnight shift.”
And just like that, I’ve booked a front-row ticket for the biggest show in town.
The minute the morning meeting is over, I hurry out into the store’s center—just in time to catch sight of Kyle. Our eyes meet, and I’m about to head over to her, until Gully barks at me to get over behind checkout one. Once I’m there, Gully pokes my shoulder and says with a smirk, “Stay!”—as if I’m some sort of Labrador—and I find myself powerless to fight his retail overlord energy.
Soon shoppers are streaming in, and Kyle has disappeared into Vanguard duty. Gully is wandering about, mouthing commands like Smile! and Be friendly! as though we’re in a charm school for the budget-conscious. All I can do is hope that somehow time passes more quickly than it usually does.
Eventually, at midday, Gully tires of lording over us and leaves work early. And as soon as I see him bolt, I throw up a REGISTER CLOSED sign and race off to look for Kyle. I find her, finally, near the door to the back room. She waves for me to follow, and we end up in the moldy storeroom from yesterday.
Sealed away from the world, she greets me, “Hey.”
“Hey. Sorry I didn’t answer your calls yesterday. I passed out from . . . well . . . everything. Whatever. Tell me what happened with Suckerpunch.”
“So much to discuss,” she says. “So, last night, I got here just before closing time. I thought I’d get to meet a Suckerpunch person in the flesh, but instead, I got another message on my phone. It said to meet in the mart’s photo booth.”
My phone chimes.
Lara has sent me a message: Any updates?
“Hold on,” I tell Kyle as I get Lara on a video call.
“Hey, guys,” Lara says as her face appears on-screen.
“I’ve got news to share,” Kyle tells us, before she explains that Suckerpunch hijacked the preview screen inside the photo booth and turned it into a live chat feed. “There was this hacker dude—his face and voice digitally distorted—and he asked me what I wanted. So I told him what we’d learned, you know, about the apocalypse.”
“And?” I ask.
“And it turns out Suckerpunch has been aware of rumors that Doomies’ apocalypse visions might be real. But when I asked him for help, the hacker dude just told me something totally crazy.” Kyle takes in a deep breath before adding, “According to him, VC knows how to close portals.”
My eyes widen, and she nods.
“Yeah, you heard me right.”
“Whoa . . . ,” Lara gasps. “So, what’s the secret?”
“Suckerpunch doesn’t know exactly,” says Kyle. “But the hacker was adamant that VC’s head honchos are hiding this knowledge.”
Lara leans in so close to her phone screen that all I see is her nose. “If we knew the secret to closing portals, we could just close the mart portal before Black Friday.” She leans back, her head in her paws. “The abyssals haven’t got enough remaining power to create new portals. Heck, they don’t even know why the mart portal is porous. So if we get rid of that soft portal, they’d have no way to invade!”
That sounds too good to be true. “But all this depends on VC actually having this ‘secret.’ And us getting it.”
Kyle purses her lips. “Yeah, that’s the tricky bit.” She pulls out her phone and shows me a photo of the VC asylum—the one I pass each day—and points out a structure just to its right. “This other building is a high-security VC facility. CCTV cameras everywhere. Top-level clearance just to get in.” She exhales as she lowers the phone. “It’s totally inaccessible for trainees like me.”
“You think the info is in that facility?” I ask.
“According to Suckerpunch, it is. The secret is kept on a file inside an air-gapped computer deep in there,” says Kyle.
“Air-gapped?” Lara asks.
“It’s a device not connected to any network or internet. It’s unhackable,” says Kyle. “Which is why Suckerpunch needs our help.”
“What do you mean?” Lara asks.
My phone screen fritzes as Lara’s video signal drops out, but I’m too distracted to call her back. “Our help?” I ask.
Kyle nods. “Suckerpunch says it could hack the computer if someone—us—were to go inside that building and manually connect the computer to the internet.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I said it was not gonna be easy,” she replies. “Which was an understatement. There’s no way we can get into that building.”
Kyle puts away her phone, and I’m about to ask what we should do next, until she beats me to the punch: “So . . . what now?” And once again, she’s looking at me as though I’m the one who has all our answers.
“I don’t know.” I shake my head. “Look. Yesterday, when you asked me what we should do next, I know I said that we can do this. But, seriously . . . I had no damn clue.” I gaze off into the shadows. “I keep thinking that something will click, but if I’m being honest, I think I’m just trying to forget the hopelessness inside me.” When I finally meet her gaze, her calm unnerves me. “Kyle, the end of the world is coming, and really, all I’ve got to offer is, like, a bumper sticker that reads YOU GOT THIS.”
Kyle studies me and then shrugs. “Dude, I’ve spent such a long time trying not to do or feel anything. Like I’ve been stuck in some bomb shelter, waiting for the fallout to clear. But you reminded me that we can act. We can do something—”
“I had my first waking vision last night.”
Her eyes widen.
“The future is literally driving me crazy.” When Kyle goes silent, I roll my shoulders and add, “You know, this is where you’re supposed to say: No, Jasper, you’re not going crazy.”
“So what if you’re crazy?” Kyle says after a long beat. “The whole world’s a mess of shards held together by Krazy Glue.”
She gets up and leads me to the doorway between the back room and the aisles. We glimpse people rushing to aisle five for a flash sale on SpongeBob SquarePants toilet paper. I spot a few of our regulars who practically live here, like this pregnant woman who seems to think that the garden section will eventually be her nursery.
“This is way crazier than you’ll ever be,” she says.
We’re so close to one another, her hair brushing against my neck.
“Do you feel crazy too?” I ask, almost a whisper.
Kyle grabs my hand and leads me back toward a shadowy corner of the back room, turning briefly on the way to say, “Let me show you my crazy.”
Kyle guides me to a small, locked door I’ve never noticed before. She fishes out a key, checks we’re alone, then unlocks the door to reveal a hidden stairwell. “Come on,” she whispers as she guides me in and shuts the door behind us.
A faint light is coming from below. Kyle and I head down a dozen steps to a tiny basement. The walls are lined with Christmas trees in all shapes and sizes, each decked out in tinsel, lights, ornaments, and glitter stars. The ground is covered in Styrofoam beads that mimic snow.
I chuckle. “What the . . . You did this?”
Kyle sits on a box wrapped in red-and-green paper. I settle in next to her.
“Last month, I discovered that Marco stored boxes of unused Christmas stuff here. So . . . I thought I’d open everything and arrange it nicely, like my parents did when I was little.”
“Yeah?”
“My parents are from Taiwan. They always said that they came to America so I could be anything and have everything. Immigrant Parenting 101.” She fluffs a tree. “Christmas at our place was like that on steroids. We had presents everywhere. Which I fucking hated, because I somehow knew we couldn’t afford so much stuff. I’d always try to tell them, ‘I don’t even want everything.’ But then, of course, after Hell Portal Day . . .”
Everything isn’t even a possibility anymore.
When she goes silent, I just nod. “Yeah.”
Kyle rolls her shoulders, gazing at a few boxes. “But when I sensed that this apocalypse could be real, I realized maybe I do want everything . . . or at least the dumb promise of everything.” She gestures around us. “I know, this looks totally crazy—”
“I dunno. Maybe you need to go a little crazy sometimes to stay a little sane.”
She breaks into a big grin and whispers, “Then let’s go a little crazy.” She opens a music app and hits play on a song—Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”
Kyle starts dancing, and suddenly we’re moving in time together, our arms brushing against trees, her hair caught tangling in curtains of tinsel. There’s not a lot of space. I trip on the beads, and we end up sprawled on our backs, where we start making snow angels in the Styrofoam and laughing so hard it hurts.
Kyle blasts the music louder, and I wonder if anyone upstairs can hear us. Soon I realize I don’t care if they do.
Our arms swing around making angel wings until our hands connect, lock, and—
This. Feels. Like. Everything.
I’m about to say something stupid, but the song comes to an end, and abruptly we’re back in the real world, with our real problems. I take a deep breath and say instead, “Tell Suckerpunch we’ll do it.”
She raises a brow, but I add, “We’ll find a way.”
We’ll probably get it wrong, but it’s not like there’s anyone else trying to right this shit anyway.
Kyle notices then that we’re holding hands, and her expression clouds. She gently pulls away from me and turns to the side to grab her phone, and says, “Replying to Suckerpunch now.” As she does, Kyle keeps her back to me, and I want to ask, What’s wrong? What’d I do?
But then she says, “Okay. Message sent.”
A burst of static emerges from her VC comm device, and she answers, “Kuan here.”
A man’s voice replies to her: “McCall here. I’m ready to take over the shift.”
“Roger. I’m coming out for the handover.”
Kyle turns off her comm and faces me. She’s got this weird all-business look in her eyes. “My shift’s over,” she says, “but I’m gonna go home and wait for Suckerpunch to reply. I’ll also brainstorm ideas on how to get into that building.”
“Later, then,” I tell her.
“Later,” she repeats, gaze falling to the Styrofoam beads.
I really want to ask what’s wrong, but she’s already heading up to the back room two steps at a time. By the time I get to the top, all I see is her back as she leaves through the rear exit.
Standing in the shadows of Christmas, nothing makes sense.